Eric Gay / AP
Using a restorative justice model, which includes teachers and students gathering in circles for discussions, seventh-graders Sarah Reusser, second from left, and Jayden Witter, top right, talk with Jackie Wade, bottom left; assistant principal Rufus Lott; assistant principal Sara Tompkins; Phillip Carney; and counselor Betty Arredondo about a recent conflict at Ed White Middle School on Friday, Oct. 16, 2015, in San Antonio. Carney said that three years after starting a restorative discipline program as principal of Ed White Middle School in San Antonio, out-of-school suspensions have dropped 72 percent.
Sunday, April 30, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Rollbacks to Nevada’s restorative justice student discipline laws made last week’s first house-passage deadline, a cutoff point where only some bills would continue through the legislative process.
Restorative justice reforms are among the most contentious education policies being discussed this legislative session, and they continue to receive broad support among state lawmakers.
Assembly Bill 285, a bipartisan effort, and Assembly Bill 330, which Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo touts, both passed the full Assembly last week on votes of 38-4.
The bills make it easier to remove violent and disruptive students from classrooms and drop the age for suspension and expulsion from 11 to 6. They revise laws crafted in 2019 in large part by the late Assemblyman Tyrone Thompson, who wanted to address disproportionate disciplinary effects on nonwhite students.
“Those are the students that I represent, students in Historic West Las Vegas and near North Las Vegas whose families and generations before them suffered from the intentional segregation of their schools, disenfranchisement, disinvestment, lack of funding. These are the children who will be affected,” Assemblywoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong, D-Las Vegas, said Tuesday before casting one of the “no” votes.
The bills do not entirely do away with restorative justice, which is rehabilitative in nature and seeks to repair harm instead of excluding students through suspension or expulsion.
Rather, the proposed revisions drop the requirement that each school district have a restorative justice discipline plan, and allow administrators to remove, suspend or expel students without creating an individual restorative justice plan first. And AB 285 requires a “plan of reinstatement” for students to reintegrate after being suspended or expelled.
Existing laws, though, have not been implemented, and there are currently no alternative educational placements for elementary-aged children, Summers-Armstrong argued.
Assemblywoman Claire Thomas, D-North Las Vegas, said the bills put the needs of adults over the needs of children, creating “a dynamic in which students are perceived as potential threats and/or criminals rather than young people in distress and need of wraparound services.” She also cast a “no” vote on both proposals.
Assemblywoman Selena Torres, who helped author the 2019 laws and is one of the lawmakers suggesting revisions, said the current law does not outline restorative justice-based plans. It also doesn’t require demographic data transparency or codify the appeals process for suspensions and expulsions, as these bills do.
Weary educators spoke at lengthy hearings earlier this session to tell lawmakers about growing violence and poor student mental health in their post-pandemic schools. Youth advocates said troubled children need support, not removal and exclusion.
Assemblyman Ken Gray, R-Dayton, said the 2019 law was well-intended but “clearly requires some well-thought-out revision so that our classrooms can be safe and productive.”
Democratic Assemblywoman Selena LaRue Hatch, a high school teacher in Reno, voted to advance the bills but noted that the behavioral crisis is larger than these bills. Lawmakers need to keep working at related systemic issues like mental health support and class sizes, she said.
Other bills
• Hybrid school board: Assembly Bill 175, which is now with the state Senate, would add four nonvoting, appointed members to the seven elected members of the Clark County School District School Board.
The bill originally would have kept CCSD and Washoe’s boards at seven members each, split at four elected members and three appointees from the county and two largest city governments. All members would have had voting power.
After criticisms from both counties’ boards about infringing on the public’s voice by reducing the number of elected representatives, bill authors Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod, D-Las Vegas, and Toby Yurek, R-Henderson, revised the bill to keep seven elected members on the boards and add four advisory, nonvoting appointees to the Clark County board and three to Washoe County.
The idea, the authors said, was to give school boards input when they had no expertise among the elected, voting members.
Critics maintained that even if bigger and blended in their members’ authority, hybrid boards would still dilute the democratic process.
If the bill becomes law, the Clark County Commission and the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas will each appoint a member to CCSD’s board.
• Cultural adornments: Assembly Bill 73, which unanimously passed the Assembly, protects students’ right to wear culturally significant adornments with customary academic caps and gowns at graduation.
Adornments and regalia, allowed as long as they aren’t likely to cause a “substantial disruption of, or material interference” with the ceremony, can represent the traditions of any group of people. The bill, which is now with the state Senate, standardizes in state law a dress code decision that is currently made at the local or school level.
• Sex education: Assembly Bill 357, which would make sex education across the state opt-out instead of opt-in, hasn’t gotten out of the Assembly yet — but receiving an exemption from the first-house deadline, so it’s still in play.
After clearing the Assembly Education Committee and getting a first approval in the full Assembly, the bill was referred to the Assembly Committee on Ways and Means on April 17 for more review.
Nevada is one of only a handful of states that has an opt-in provision, which only allows students to take sex ed if their parents grant permission. The bill is the fifth attempt in 10 years to make lessons on sexuality and puberty more inclusive and standardized.
